by Jen Calonita
“This will just take a sec,” Liz apologizes, putting her hand over the phone. “Hey, hon! Yeah. That was awesome. Friday? Um… yes!”
I stare glumly at the other tables. A few people around my age are staring at me and whispering. They must go to Clark Hall too. This supposed driver’s ed crash I caused in alter-Kaitlin-verse was apparently a doozy. No one looked too happy to see me when I walked in here.
“You’re hilarious! You so deserve that new pilot. You’re going to get it. I just know it.”
What’s happened to my best friend? Sure, Lizzie’s always enjoyed having money, but she’s never gotten wrapped up in fame the way she seems to be now. She’s sort of morphed into a version of…
Liz’s phone rings again. “LC! Hey, babe. Yes, I know it’s Cobb, not Conrad.” She rolls her eyes at me. “How’s Ava? Tell her that tantrum she threw at the door at Shelter the other night was hilarious. Friday?” Now Liz looks nervous. “I just made plans, but I’m sure I can stop by. Uh-huh. Yeah…”
Liz is friends with LAVA? (That’s the nickname the press gave Lauren and Ava Hayden when Sky and I were fighting with them. We’re SKAT.) Liz is so above them! At least my Liz was.
“Yeah, Kates is with me.” She holds out the phone excitedly. “Ava wants to talk to you. She says you haven’t taken her calls.”
Wait. WHAT? I’m friends with Ava again? And Lauren too?
EWW.
WHY?
I shake my head fiercely. “I think I overexerted myself. Tell her I’ll call her later.”
“She’s using the exhausted-from-the-car-crash excuse again,” Liz jokes and winks at me. “I’ll tell her. Bye!” Liz snaps off her phone. “She’s my least favorite, but what can you do? We need her.” She gives the phone a nasty look when it starts to vibrate almost immediately after she puts it down. This time she actually ignores it. “Let’s talk about you. Ready for school on Wednesday?”
“No,” I say without skipping a beat. I pull at a frayed edge of our tablecloth. It looks like it was singed.
“You need a makeover,” Liz suggests. “Something so that no one knows what you look like when you get there. It will keep Lori and Austin’s crew from laying into you about driver’s ed. Austin just got out of the hospital today, you know.” I open my mouth to say something, but Liz beats me to it. “Did you send your favorite crush a card?” She winks. “Probably not, considering you put him there.” She laughs. “But seriously. Makeover is in order. We should call Ken and have him squeeze you in. My treat.” She starts to dial.
HOLLYWOOD SECRET NUMBER TEN: In my real world, stars make physical transformations all the time and pay for it themselves. When a star makes a physical transformation for a movie role, it’s on the studio’s dime. Need to drop twenty pounds to play a model? Learn a Russian accent to play a spy? Dye your hair for a superhero character? A movie studio or a producer pays every penny of it. There is only one condition to this rule: the change you’re making must be for a specific project or part that you’re playing. If you want lipo so you can get the part of your dreams, the check is coming out of your own checkbook.
“I don’t want to go to Ken.” I push Liz off. “I just want to fly below the radar for a while till I can get out of here.”
“What do you mean, ‘get out of here’?” Liz gives me an odd look. “LC just told me about a party down on Laurel Canyon. We have to get back out there. I need my wingman. Besides, I heard Lennon might be there.” She sighs. “Imagine if he remembers my name? I will just die.” As if on cue, her phone starts to vibrate again.
She looks at the screen, but doesn’t answer yet. “It’s Violet! Holly! NYC.” She holds the phone up to me as if for proof. Her face drops. “I want to talk to you, but…” She hesitates. “No, I’ll let the call go to voicemail. I can do that, right? What if they don’t call again?” She looks so crushed I almost feel bad for Liz.
“Take it,” I insist and take another slice of pizza. This Kaitlin doesn’t have to fit into a size four for her Small Fries wardrobe. I take a bite and the gooey cheese burns the back of my throat. I mumble through the pain. “Don’t keep Violet and Holly waiting.”
Liz grins. “Okay. I won’t.” And then she goes back to booking our week and weekend plans in the celebrity-hanger-on universe.
Note to Self (handwritten now that I no longer have an iPhone)
Real Me:
Figure out why I’m here.
Figure out how to get home!!!!
Alter-me:
Find outfit in closet for school on Wednesday
Grease Matty and Liz for scoop on my life at Clark Hall
FA1122 “Trying on a New Life”
FADE IN:
MALIBU—PICTURESQUE SPANISH-STYLE MANSION
SAMANTHA, PAIGE, and SARA are touring a hacienda with an expansive pool, a giant living room, a state-of-the-art kitchen, marble floors, and high ceilings. The home is fully furnished with upscale furniture and antiques. The atmosphere is warm and inviting, in sharp contrast to SAMANTHA’S mood.
REALTOR #1
As you can see, this home boasts three electric fireplaces. One in the living room, one in the den, and one in the master suite, which also has a Jacuzzi tub and a private balcony overlooking the pool.
SAMANTHA
Three fireplaces? I’m sure you use those a lot in southern California.
PAIGE
(her voice tight) Samantha…
SARA
What I want to know is where my bedroom would be. Is it on the second floor? If so, by any chance is there a palm tree outside that one could conceivably climb if I, um, had to escape from a fire?
PAIGE
You’ll have to excuse us. My girls have been through a lot the past few weeks, and sometimes I think none of us are ready for a move. Other times I think we need this more than anything in this world.
SAMANTHA
Keep telling yourself that, Mom. Maybe that will make you feel better about uprooting all our lives. I understand the need to find someplace new to live after the fire, but why can’t we stay closer to home?
REALTOR #1
Well, as I was saying, this home is four thousand square feet and has five bedrooms and a separate carriage house with an additional bedroom, small kitchen, and full bath, which could easily be converted into office space.
SARA
No gym? Geez, Mom. This place won’t work.
PAIGE
Girls… (sighs to the Realtor) Could we
have a moment alone, please?
REALTOR #1
Absolutely. I’ll make some calls in the kitchen.
We have three other homes to tour after this one, so have a cookie and keep your strength up! (laughs annoyingly)
SARA
Oh goodie! Dried-out Entenmann’s cookies.
Mom, this blows.
SAMANTHA
I’ll say.
PAIGE
Girls, whatever happened to having a big adventure? When you two were little, all you ever wanted to do was play what you called “real life.” You dressed up in costumes and pretended you were princesses in foreign lands or heroines saving their princes from dragons.
SARA
We always were ahead of the curve, even back then.
SAMANTHA
But that was all pretend, Mom. This is real life, and in the real world, moving stinks. I want our old house back. I don’t want to start over in Malibu and live on the beach! I want to keep my life the same.
PAIGE
Do you really, Sam? You want your life to be exactly the way it is now? No changes at all?
SAMANTHA
Yes.
SARA
(snickers) Liar.
SAMANTHA
What? If you guys have something to say, say it.
PAIGE
What I’m trying to say is that for someone who loves her life so much, you certainly don’t seem that happy. You seem stressed a lot, and tired. Sometimes I think the four walls around you
are going to crash in on you, that’s how overwhelmed you look. Yes, your boyfriend makes you happy, and your charity work, but what makes YOU happy, Sam? What needs to change in your life to bring that smile back twenty-four/seven? (Sam doesn’t answer.) Just what I thought. You don’t know. But that’s okay, Sam, because whether you figure it out in our old home or a new one, I know you will find what’s missing.
ELEVEN: Déjà Vu
“Sweetie?” Mom is tentative. “Aren’t you going to get out?”
Mom has pulled into the drop-off zone at Clark Hall High School, and I’m glued to the leather seats in terror. Matty slid out of the backseat as soon as we got here and walked ahead of me to class. I guess even the socially awkward alter-Matty doesn’t want to be seen with the girl who supposedly ended Austin Meyers’s lacrosse career. A car honks angrily behind us, and soon a whole symphony of honks is begging Mom to move. She can’t. I still haven’t gotten out yet.
“Go around again,” I tell Mom pleadingly. I clutch the sparkly red bag to my chest. It’s not a school bag, but there is something I like about this thing that I can’t put my finger on. I’ve taken it everywhere. It’s sort of calming.
“This is the last time, Kaitlin. I’ve already circled three times.” Mom gives me a withering look as another driver lays on the horn. Then she adjusts her blue scrubs top. (When she first came downstairs this morning in scrubs and rainbow-colored Crocs, I almost spit my Froot Loops across the breakfast table and started laughing. “What’s so funny?” she’d said defensively. “I know they’re not the most glamorous threads in the world, but I do my best to jazz them up.” I’m assuming the jazzing part is the rainbow ponytail holder she has in her hair, but seriously—Mom in a ponytail?)
I watch out the window of “our” car—a 2005 Town & Country minivan, how horrifying. As picturesque Clark Hall moves out of view again and Mom joins the long line of cars and limos waiting to do drop-off duty, I find myself exhaling a little.
There was a day when I used to dream about coming to Liz’s private school full-time. It reminds me of the colleges she and Austin are applying to as we speak in some other realm. (That’s my new theory: I’m stuck on a different plane. Hey, it happened on the Charmed rerun I saw last night!) Clark Hall sits on ten acres of rolling hills, sports fields, and super green manicured lawns. The school itself is made up of five brick, vine-covered mansions (this was once a private residence). Most of the buildings are connected by brick open-air walkways that are covered with beautiful arches and blooming flower beds. Gleaming silver lockers line separate covered walkways. Thankfully, since I’ve actually been a student here before—or should I say I was one in disguise for a brief period—I know my way around.
“Kaitlin, I know facing your peers is going to be hard,” Mom says, “but what’s happened has happened. You can’t change the past. All you can do is work on making a brighter future.”
I just stare at Mom, my eyes blinking rapidly. “Wow, Mom, that was sort of inspirational.” My real mom is inspired, yes, but inspirational… uh, not really, unless it involves explaining how I’m going to appear on two live late-night talk shows in the same hour.
Mom smiles and steers the car around the bend. We’re four cars away from drop-off again. “It’s the truth. Make your apologies, be contrite, and I promise this will all blow over by the weekend. Your father and I spoke with Principal Pearson and no one is pressing charges. They know that you hitting the gas instead of the brake was an accident. The fact that you hurt a few students is a very, very unfortunate mistake, but it was still a mistake. Right?”
I nod unsurely. Who’s to say what this Kaitlin might have been thinking? Whenever someone drops a new detail about how I supposedly behave here, I cringe.
Mom touches my cheek. “I’m just glad to see you out of your room.”
When I was watching my fourth hour of the Charmed marathon last night in three-day-old sweats with an empty box of Oreos in my hands that I couldn’t recall eating, a revelation dawned on me: I’m not going to figure out what’s happened to me by staying in this room for the rest of my life. If I want to get out of this dream/realm/coma/purgatory, I have to leave the house. And maybe, while I’m here, I can do some good. Like show Matty how to use hair gel and get Liz to see that hanging out with the Jersey Shore cast is not something to aspire to.
So here I am.
Mom pulls the car slowly to the drop-off point again and puts the car in park. She stares at me expectantly.
“Kaitlin, it’s time,” she says kindly, but firmly all the same. “If you need me, just call. The school nurse has your painkillers if you need them, okay?”
There is no avoiding it any longer. I grab my crutches (my ankle will be in a cast for four weeks) and open the car door. If I had two good legs, maybe I could get up and run away.
“Oh, and honey?” Mom rolls down the car window and calls to me. “Principal Pearson would like a word with you before your first class, okay?”
I nod. It’s absolutely okay. Principal P. is always a welcome face, and I adore her. I take a deep breath and step out into the cool December air. I pull my Gap peacoat tightly across my chest, sling my book bag over my shoulder, and use my crutches to hobble down the path. I’m wearing a long green tunic I found in alter-Kaitlin’s dresser, black leggings, and a multicolored scarf around my neck. I can’t squeeze most of my jeans over my cast till it comes off, so I’m wearing skirts and loose pants or leggings. I also can’t wear two shoes. My one foot has on a ballet flat. The other has my toes wiggling through the cast. Still, at least I look decent for my death march. I catch people staring, and I immediately lower my eyes and move swiftly. It’s a technique I do well after all my paparazzi run-ins.
“It’s her.”
“Oh my God! Kaitlin Burke is back.”
“Look who had the nerve to show up.”
Ugh. This is not going to be fun. But what choice do I have? I have to figure out what I’m doing here if I want things to change. And change is the operative word. The first thing I want to do after I leave Principal Pearson’s office is find alter-Austin and apologize.
Austin.
Just saying his name makes my stomach ache and flip-flop at the same time. I’ve called him every night, but no one picks up. Maybe if I can apologize for being selfish and putting both Austins in harm's way, all will be forgiven, and I’ll wake up in the real world again.
I find my way to the main office without a problem, but I can’t figure out a way to open it while I balance my crutches.
“It’s Kaitlin! Did anyone tell Lori she’s back?”
Move crutch to the left, try to balance on my right foot without the crutch. Grab door handle. Nope. Doesn’t work.
“I so would have transferred, wouldn’t you?”
Use both hands to grab door handle. Okay, now what? How do I get through without my crutches?
“Go home, Burke!” someone yells.
Great, I’m a leper. How am I supposed to get to the bottom of alter-Kaitlin if I can’t get through a door?
“Need some help?” a custodian asks me and holds open the door.
I smile gratefully and head into the office, but as soon as I do, I wish I could use my crutches to pole vault out of there. The secretaries stop talking, the teachers who were chatting by the coffee machine stare me down, and I swear even the phone lines stop ringing. Then I see my history teacher/driver’s ed instructor, Mr. Michaels, and oohh… his face looks like it really hurts. His left eye is black and blue, he has cuts on his arms, and his right hand is bandaged. Matty said he hit his face on the dash when I stopped violently short. He uses his injured hand to pull on his salt-and-pepper goatee.
“Ms. Burke,” he says stiffly and gathers his papers quickly, as if I might try to ram him with my crutches. “I trust I’ll see you in third period.”
I have history third period! Okay, at least I know where to go for one class. “Mr. Michaels, I just wanted to apologize,” I start to say.
Mr. Michaels pushes his wire-rim glasses up on his long nose. “I don’t want to discuss this in a public forum, Ms. Burke. If you have something to say to me, make an appointment after class.” He pushes through the office door, practically hitting the speechless custodian, and disappears into the crowded walkway. Needless to say, I have a feeling I won’t be getting an A this semester.
“Kaitlin Burke? Principal Pearson will see you now,” says one of the secretaries.
I don’t think I’ve ever moved so fast on crutches. As I hobble through the door, I notice Principal P. ’s office looks the same as it did when I was a student. Plaques hang on the wall behind her cluttered mahogany desk, and a flat-screen TV is anchored to the opposite wall. Principal P. is leaning back in her chair, so engrossed in whatever is on TV that she barely sees me walk in. She looks the same as she does in the real world—short and plump with graying black hair and off-the-wall style. Today she has on a lime green polka-dot dress, which makes me sort of dizzy.
“I, uh, will be right with you, Kaitlin,” says Principal P. in hushed tones. She waves like an air traffic controller to a leather seat opposite her desk. I place my bag on the chair next to me and freeze when I hear Sky’s voice.
Oh goodie! Dried-out Entenmann’s cookies. Mom, this blows.
I’ll say.
The second line should be mine, but instead, I cringe when I hear Alexis. My nails dig into the book bag next to me to keep from screaming. Family Affair cuts to a commercial break, and Principal P. picks up her TiVo remote and starts to fast-forward. She does a double take when she turns and remembers I’m waiting.
“I’m sorry!” she chuckles. “I get so wrapped up in this show sometimes. Silly to love a soap so much, I know.”
“Not at all,” I disagree, feeling the need to defend my legacy, even if, at the moment, it isn’t mine. Here’s what I’ve pieced together about the alter-Family Affair: it’s still running, but the storylines are ones I did back in the past. It’s as if every season is jumbled up. “I love Family Affair. It’s never been just a nighttime soap, even though people try to dismiss it as such.”